The other reason for holding retrials were imprecise indictments, the organisations said presenting a report on war crimes trials in Croatia in 2006.
The quality of trials can be enhanced with the additional training of judges and with the stronger engagement of the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor, said representatives of the Osijek-based Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, Katarina Kruhonja and Veselinka Kastratovic.
The report was made after activists monitored 18 of the 23 war crimes trials held before several county courts last year. The document was compiled by the said Osijek association in cooperation with the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO), the Dokumenta organisation, and the Civil Committee for Human Rights.
In those 18 monitored trials, ten were retrials, and only 38 of the 87 indictees from these proceedings were available to the Croatian judiciary.
Of those available indictees, only 12 were detained in custody during the proceedings and others only appeared at main hearings.
The HHO chairman, Zarko Puhovski, said that it was not good that seven accused of genocide were allowed to be free during the trials as such indictees could be dangerous.
Most of the indictees, namely 71 of the 87 were former Serb rebels, and 16 were former Croatian soldiers.